Mobile phone campaign to have awareness day

A mobile phone awareness campaign which was launched in Devon last year is now to be promoted via an awareness day on 13 May.

My Red Thumb was launched in May 2014 as a multi-agency road safety campaign designed to raise awareness of the risks of distraction associated with using a mobile phone while driving.

The original idea came from a similar campaign in America which uses a ‘red thumb reminder’ to encourage a driver to remember not to use his phone by painting his thumb nail red.

Devon’s My Red Thumb campaign set out to reach as many road users as possible through the use of social media and to use behavioural change techniques to encourage people to change their habits.

My Red Thumb Day will take place on Wednesday 13 May when the campaign will be promoted though social media, links to associated websites and variable message boards. Partners involved in the awareness day include Devon County Council, Devon & Somerset Fire & Rescue, Devon & Cornwall Police, Torbay Council, Peninsula Trauma Network, South Western Ambulance Trust, Learn2Live Partnership, Devon Air Ambulance, The Honest Truth Partnership and the Highways England.

It is perhaps worth considering whether staff costs should be included when calculating the cost of an initiative. Also the use of facilities will have a cost as well even if not directly paid for as part of the work.
Nick, Lancashire

Thanks for that Nigel. It's amazing how little money it actually takes to create a road safety intervention when everybody involved provides their services and facilities etc for nothing.
Duncan MacKillop. No surprise - No accident.

Duncan:
My Red Thumb Day is mainly a social media partnership campaign run through Twitter and Facebook. We do have a website for the campaign which we have piggy backed on to our existing young driver website www.learn-2-live.org. The pages were designed internally using artwork provided to us free of charge by the originators of the idea in the USA www.redthumbreminder.com. The web company built the pages as part of our normal maintenance contract with them, the domain name “myredthumb” cost us £20. We have invested in signing up for Hootsuite Pro, a social media platform which is costing us approximately £8 per month.

In terms of posters and supporting materials for the day, the designs have been created in-house by a couple of our partners - Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service and Torbay Council. Those designs are free to download by other partners and organisations across the country. We have ordered a small quantity of posters, flyers and tee shirts to support the day next week and to be used at our county show the following week. The total cost of that is in the region of £800, I’m not sure of the exact figure as our partners in the fire service are ordering and paying for some of it.

We do have a short film on YouTube to go with the campaign, this cost £2000 last year and was funded by our young driver project Learn2Live. That project receives over £15,000 each year in support from commercial companies and part of that money funded the film.